Critical Geography

Studying the social dynamics of power, privilege, control, and inequality

This competence examines the social construction of space. Students explore socio-spatial questions through theory, reflection, and practice, including field trips, participation in sustainable community development projects, and explorations of social movements such as "right to the city" projects and environmental justice campaigns across the globe. Courses ask questions such as: How are the social dynamics of power, privilege, control, and inequality, as well as cooperation, production, resistance and social transformation, organized and shaped the ways we collectively organize and live in space and place? Topics of investigation include critical architectural studies, the study of public and private space and state formation, critical development studies, the study of urbanization, the politics of global agricultural production, critical globalization studies, and urban/rural studies